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The Best RPGs Of 2012

That’s actually not a terribly easy question to answer, primarily because nobody really agrees on the criteria.

Is it a system of leveling and character customization? Or is it about meaningful choices that impact you and the world around you? Or is it something else entirely?

In the world of video games, there are all sorts of RPGs.

There is the action-RPG, for instance, which can itself be divided into multiple sub-genres from the click-and-loot variety to more story-driven affairs.

Then you have the turn-based titles, which have multiple sub-genres as well. There’s JRPGs, CRPGs, and Western RPGs. There are science fiction role-playing games, fantasy role-playing games, and even some that transport us to more mundane worlds.

For the purposes of this list, I am only including games that I’ve played personally. I didn’t play all the role-playing games that came out or were re-released in 2012. I definitely missed some important ones such as The Secret World, a game I plan on playing soon but will not be considered for this list.

As a reader and a gamer, you may disagree with these choices—you may even disagree that any given game actually qualifies as an RPG to begin with. That’s fine. I take a “big tent” approach to the criteria, personally.

I do leave out some games that I think are better described as simply “Strategy” rather than RPG. For instance, you won’t find XCOM: Enemy Unknown on this list or Crusader Kings II. Nor do I think a game like Darksiders II quite qualifies as an RPG, even though it has elements of loot-hunting and leveling.

Similarly, I am not including betas. No Path of Exile or any other beta-only RPG. Hopefully we’ll see some of those in the 2013 list.

And now, without further ado…

The Re-Releases

First off, several games came out in 2012 that were re-releases of older games. I didn’t play all of the re-releases—for instance, the Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition did not make it into my busy schedule—but I played three that were brought to new platforms with some enhancements and extra content. These three were among my top games of the year, and in some ways beat out just about every new release of 2012.

Persona 4 Golden – PS Vita

Persona 4 Golden is the handheld re-release of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, originally launched on the PlayStation 2.

The game pits you and your student friends against a shadowy world of demons. It also requires you to make choices and commit to a hectic schedule revolving around your school, work, and personal life. Somehow this more mundane side of the game is every bit as fascinating and addictive as the combat in the fog-drenched, mysterious TV world.

The game is massive and the story a mystery. It’s one of the first Japanese RPGs I’ve played in a long time, and it’s absolutely one of the best games to date on Sony’s PS Vita.

The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition – Xbox 360

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings originally launched on PC exclusively in 2011. CD Projekt RED released an Xbox 360 port of the game last year. This “Enhanced Edition” was, in my estimation, the best port of 2012. It isn’t as pretty as the enhanced PC version, but it is remarkably well-crafted and well-suited to the Xbox 360.

Beyond the quality of the port itself, The Witcher 2 is a truly jaw-dropping role-playing game. Its story is deep and its world rich and believable. The combat isn’t perfect, but the overall experience is simply breathtaking whether you play on Xbox 360 or PC. The story of Geralt of Rivia, a monster-hunting Witcher, and the tangled politics of sorceresses, kings, and elven rebels, makes The Witcher 2 one of the finest RPGs I’ve ever played.

Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition – PC

No game was more powerful and no game influenced how I think about video games more than Dark Souls, a game I didn’t play until 2012. The game was ported, rather badly, to the PC by From Software last year after its 2011 release. With a few quick mods installed and a controller plugged into your computer, the game plays and looks better than it ever did on consoles.

The Prepare To Die edition also includes an entire new chapter—Artorias of the Abyss—which not only adds new areas, monsters, and bosses, but a great deal of rich game lore. I spent more time with Dark Souls than with any other game in 2012, not merely because of its challenge or its outstanding combat, but because of the way the game immerses you in its dark, enigmatic world.

The New Releases

Many RPGs that came out in 2012 were new IPs or sequels and spiritual successors to older games (though I include games that were only released in North America for the very first time in this category.) Sometimes these games were improvements on their predecessors; sometimes they were a decided step back. But mostly, 2012 was a year of mixed-bag RPGs. A lot of good ideas were not fully executed, and a lot of bad ideas made customers angry.

Still, beyond all that 2012 did have an impressive suite of role-playing games across many different systems.

Guild Wars 2 – PC

I’m not a fan of MMORPGs—massively multiplayer online role-playing games—but I want to be. And Guild Wars 2 has done more than almost any other MMO to try to appeal to gamers like me.

That being said, as quality as Guild Wars 2 may be, I still have a hard time caring about its story, or feeling involved in the events of the world. It’s one of the best MMOs I’ve ever played, but at the end of the day it sits at the bottom of a list comprised of mostly single-player experiences.

Borderlands 2 – PC, Xbox 360, PS3

Maybe Borderlands 2 isn’t really an RPG, but it’s one of the closest things we have to a first-person-shooter in the genre. It’s basically a loot-grind in the spirit of games like Diablo, but it replaces click-click-click with bang-bang-bang.

The cell-shaded graphics are wonderful, and the game’s humor, while grating to some, left me with the hint of a grin at all times. All in all, Borderlands 2 may not sink you very deep into your character, but between its quests, its endless supply of guns and loot, and its skill-tree system, the game is a lot of fun, especially in small doses.

Mass Effect 3 – PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U

I know the ending soured this one for many people. For me, I felt the game drifted too far into cut-scene land. But it’s still a really top-notch game, and easily the best-looking of the series.

While the story suffers compared to the first two games, the combat itself was one of the better cover-shooter experiences I’ve played. And for all its flaws, Mass Effect 3 does pack an emotional punch in a way that few other RPGs did in 2012.

Diablo III – PC

Diablo III is yet another controversial game that I had a lot of fun with, right up until the disappointing end and lack of end-game. The linearity of Blizzard’s latest Diablo title is its biggest flaw.

Still, I had a lot of fun hack-and-slashing my way through it. I had my gripes along the way, but there’s a lot to like about Diablo III even if it’s not exactly the game we had hoped for. Hopefully an expansion and some decent PvP come sooner than later, as there’s only so long we can keep clicking through the same motions.

Legend of Grimrock – PC

Talk about old-school. Legend of Grimrock is a game that hails back to the old first-person dungeon crawlers. It has everything from challenging puzzles to, well, a whole lot of challenging everything.

It may be a low-cost, low-budget indie game, but it feels a lot bigger and is sure to tap into that well of nostalgia old-school RPG gamers carry around with them.

For my part, I felt like I was playing Eye of the Beholder again, only in high-definition.

The Last Story – Wii

A compelling story and unique cover-based party action combat make The Last Story one of the better RPGs of the year. I can’t help but feel a pang of disappointment that this game didn’t launch on the Wii U instead, as the lower-definition of the Wii does make it a bit clunkier looking than it deserves to be.

Still, as far as JRPGs go, the game feels fresh and is both fun and thought-provoking, with elements of both action and strategy to keep it humming along. I also like the fact that the Wii’s controls are incidental to the game experience, avoiding any motion gimmicks.

Bronze Medal: Torchlight 2 – PC

Click-and-loot can get old fast, but Torchlight 2 manages to be fun all the way through. The story is every bit as vapid as the story in Diablo III, but the game itself feels much more unique and less linear than Blizzard’s much larger and better-selling game.

Torchlight 2 allows for a reasonable amount of character customization, and provides players with a loot system that actually affects gameplay beyond damage-per-second. Each piece of armor, each shield, and each weapon change the way you look and the way the game is played. It’s not a perfect game, but it’s one of the best action-RPGs to hit digital shelves in a long time.

Dilithium Medal: Xenoblade Chronicles – Wii

Xenoblade Chronicles is an enormous game and one of the most complex and difficult RPGs of 2012. Between a day and night cycle, moving NPCs, a complicated questing and crafting system, and some of the most challenging combat in any RPG out there, Xenoblade takes just about everything from the JRPG genre and turns it on its head.

Interesting, likable characters help bulwark the story which takes place on a world comprised of two massive giants. The big, open world itself is said to be about the size of Japan.

While the game at times feels a bit too much like a single-player MMO with its bevy of fetch-quests, it also manages to be far more interesting than any MMO I’ve played. And the music is absolutely gorgeous.

Atium Medal: Dragon’s Dogma – Xbox 360, PS3

I probably critiqued Dragon’s Dogma more harshly, or at least more thoroughly, than any other RPG I liked in 2012 save for maybe Diablo III (there were others I disliked so much I had to stop critiquing them entirely, if only for my sanity’s sake.)

That being said, I also believe that Dragon’s Dogma was among the most ambitious and promising titles of 2012.

The scope of the game is not so huge as Xenoblade. The graphics are not on a par with many of the other games in this list.

The game itself takes many good ideas from other games—like Dark Souls—and then layers them into its own suite of innovations. A wide assortment of weapons, armor, and giant beasts keeps the action fast-paced and exciting at all times.

The story is weird and confusing, as are many of the quests, but that only adds to the game’s charm. Climbing the back of a cyclops, or gripping tightly to a griffin as you fly up into the air, or changing your character class midway through the game to learn new skills and a new playstyle entirely, all make the game one of the most interesting, deep action-RPGs to come out in a long time—though I will admit, it’s a close call between this and Xenoblade.

Now that the title has a Hard Mode it’s even better, though Hard Mode really is hard. With the Dark Arisen expansion coming out in a couple months, the exploration of Gransys will continue.

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Well I really did think it deserved to be on there given it came out on PC in 2012, and I really truly did think Witcher 2 on Xbox and P4G on Vita deserved to be on there, but since that made three re-releases I figured they deserved their own mini-list. Though, in terms of games I’ve played for the first time, Dark Souls is my GOTY.

Between DaS and The Witcher 2 were the best re-release of 2012 and honestly they were in my top 10 games of 2012 anyway. I felt that BL2 was a great game but I couldnt get into after beating it once. I have a love/hate relationship with Dragon’s Dogma Nice start weak middle but that third act and ending was AMAZING. It blew my mind. Diablo 3 had the same problem as BL2 after thefirst time I beat it(and that’s after all the times I was kicked out.

I feel you on DaS. Before I played it, I was always looking for Morrowind clones or games that captured that feeling, but since my experience with Dark Souls that all changed. Now I find myself attempting to stifle my own opinions on RPGs as too often they turn into, “Dark Souls did it better.”

I desperately need to play GW2 and Dragon’s Dogma as I hear they can get very engrossing and having a group of friends who play GW2 is most likely going to make my journey much more interesting than playing it as a single-player-ish MMO.

Diablo 3 was a huge disappointment for a large number of reasons, but I knew when I bought it that I wouldn’t be happy (I’d actually watched a number of the pre-release videos showcasing the game and was not impressed.) The fact that I kept playing it for nearly 3 weeks shows it was a much better game than I thought it would be, in spite of its flaws.

Mass Effect 3…well, I’ve said my piece on it before, many times. In short, if the game didn’t have so many good moments within it, fans wouldn’t have had the reaction to the ending that they did.

If only it were as easy to play a game at work without getting caught/in trouble as it is to head to a website and post comments to articles I read on-line.

This list is pushing it something fierce… Borderlands 2 and Mass Effect 3 aren’t RPGs, only in the very loosest possible sense. If you count those as RPGs you might as well count Battlefield 3 as an MMORPG and Dark Souls either as a First Person Shooter (can use bows after all) or Action Adventure/Platformer (lots of jumping around).

Diablo III was just a bad game :P

There’s a lot of other games that might have rather fit the list instead: Risen 2, Kingdoms of Amalur, Inquisitor, Game of Thrones for instance.